Creativity week radi!2018

Creativity week radi!2018

The aim of Creativity week radi!2018 is to continue to raise awareness and interest in different audiences for the development and interaction of cultural and creative industries with other sectors, creativity-enhancing education, innovative entrepreneurship and intelligent management, learning the best from foreign experience and developments, highlighting Latvia’s achievements through direct citizens’ engagement. This year’s concept takes into account Latvia’s and the whole Baltic Sea region countries future dimension, through which Latvia’s achievements and the increase in the potential for economic growth and human capital are demonstrated.

radi! aims to tackle the regional challenges of importance to the local people in Latvia by giving them useful tools and methods with the premise of design thinking for the development of the issue. Social and creative entrepreneurs, municipality representatives and local people, including minorities, are all invited to take part in the events. Hence radi! concept is primarily implemented expressing the idea that every citizen of Latvia is part of the process of creating the country and thus highlighting the idea of participation and by impersonating the path of the initiative messages to a single individual.

As a result, the sub-themes covered by the following communication lines are linked to radi!:

• the role and contribution of creative industries, design thinking and partnerships, seeking new opportunities and solutions in the context of future challenges such as cooperation, traditional industries and their interaction, social well-being, quality of life, urban development, rebirth of degraded areas, knowledge economy, artificial intelligence, new technologies and virtual and supplemented reality;

• development of learning approaches, the use of new methods for future generations, the increasing importance of feedback in monitoring the quality of education processes;

• design values, thinking methods and cross-disciplinary approaches in the management of public administration processes in the era of rapid change and development, initiating projects and making decisions based on the needs of the population.

Creativity week radi!2018, held from 18 April until 1 October 2018, is a package of seven evens in the regions of Latvia with the target to address specific challenges facing the regions, including creative community building, creative quarter forming, smart city solutions development and scaling up regional cooperation, involving end users and representatives from different sectors and applying design thinking methodology.

In May and June, radi! regional workshops were held in Daugavpils, Liepāja, Jelgava and Cēsis. In Daugavpils, applying design thinking methodology, the workshop participants generated solutions to the challenge of developing a creative quarter in the city which grows on the initiative of its creative community. In Liepāja, the opportunities of closer cooperation between Liepāja and Klaipeda (Lithuania) municipalities – the creative coast region – were explored: the participants formed the teams to come up with ideas on regional branding and cooperation possibilities to scale up the region in creative industries, start-up and business development, as well as attracting talent. Jelgava workshop took over upon the city’s initiative of developing a smart city concept: a playground for smart innovation. The participants worked on the ideas of smart solutions for the city. In Cēsis, the local challenge was on how to bring more creativity into public space. By exploring the needs and insights with people met in the streets of Cēsis, the workshop participants came up with scenarios on how to make Cēsis more attractive for locals and visitors by promoting and bringing arts and creative industries in the public space.

As a follow-up of the regional events, in August participants from Liepāja, Daugavpils, Jelgava and Cēsis events and idea owners were invited to a bigger event in Riga devoted to design thinking and how to bring their ideas forward in the regions.

The Creativity week 2018 closing event aimed to break the stereotypes and myths in the society about failures, risk-taking and their potential consequences. Any apparent failure can serve as a basis for new success, so in the introductory part of the workshop, Edgar Bāliņš, a stand up comedian, spoke with an inspiring narrative about the founding of Fckup Nights Rīga. In addition, one of the founders of the festival LAMPA, Egita Prāma, shared her experience story about the development of the festival and their overcome obstacles since the start of the festival. The event was followed by a journalist Sandra’s Kropa’s moderated debate with the head of the medical technology startup “Anatomy Next”, Sandis Kondrāts, movie bloger Sergej Timofejev, the “Pride of Latvia 2018” and the board game “Anger Control” creator Līga Bērziņa and Ron Badger founder of “Heroic Sport” from Denmark, who openly discussed the role of mistakes made in their professional life.
More information: www.radilatvija.lv

Extended photo gallery from radi! events can be viewed here.

Selection of radi! events’ photos: